The influence of institutions on the politics of planning: A case study of New York City's Environmental Quality Review procedure

Contemporary urban planning scholars agree on the dominant political position of real estate developers in urban America. In New York City, scholars have emphasized the influence of real estate interests in public policy. They have argued that during the 1980 boom years development interests and government officials cooperated to facilitate the physical development of the city through tax incentives and favorable zoning decisions. However, these actors were unable to alter the City's Environmental Quality Review procedure (CEQR), an important land use regulation. CEQR mandates that development proposals undergo intensive, time consuming, pre-development environmental planning. This planning process has become the source of environmental impact information for the city and the linchpin for local participation in land use reviews. The lack of developers' and government officials' influence in avoiding or altering the CEQR process stands in contrast to the fate of other development policies.;This dissertation is a political analysis of the CEQR policy. A historical study of the institutional structures that constrain policy outcomes and frame the relationship between participants complements an empirical analysis of policy outputs. The three tasks to this research included: (1) identifying and describing the political institutions affecting CEQR; (2) describing the implementation of CEQR through a statistical analysis of policy outputs for project proposals submitted from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s; and, (3) linking the institutional structures to CEVR implementation.;The findings suggest that intergovernmental relationships, administrative law doctrines and the institutionalization of community based interests together have framed the CEQR process. Statistically significant relationships shaped by institutional structures exist between the outputs of the CEQR policy and the interests of both the mayor and community groups. These structures allow for the influence of local communities while limiting the mayor's ability to respond to other interests. The neoinstitutional conception of politics challenges contemporary urban political theories which emphasize the role of social groups in controlling urban development policies.